Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“Richard knows he’s one of very few people in this world who are in a position to take their pick of realities.”

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Susan Bernofsky)

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Time does something to a person, because a human being isn’t a machine that can be switched on and off. The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes. Go, Went, Gone is a carefully crafted, meticulously researched novel that feels as natural as walking down the street. Protagonist Richard is a newly retired professor of Classics and a childless widower. As a former East Berliner […]

#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (double Bingo!)

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#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (this book is set at Stovner in Oslo, three stops away from where I live on the metro. It also concerns exactly the sort of pupils that I teach.) Two youths, both living in the same tower block in a suburb on the east side of Oslo, in Stovner (where the large majority of inhabitants are immigrants or the children of immigrants). They start out going to the same high school. Starting in the year 2000, the framing device consists of these […]

Age, Gender and Culture in one London Community

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Bingo Square: Dream Vacation I honestly am not sure what I was expecting from this one but between Reese Witherspoon and positive Cannonball reviews, I knew I wanted to read it.  It had a darker underside than I realized while also focusing on all the themes I was expecting from the story, such as relationships, gender, cultural and generational divides, and different approaches to life as an immigrant. Nikki is the youngest daughter in an English Punjabi family.  Already being English speakers when they emigrated, […]

Hooked Until the Epilogue

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I was so, so about this book until literally the last three pages. Don’t read them. Skip the Epilogue, it’ll just ruin the previous 300 pages. Why am I so angry about 3 pages? Because the rest of this book was so freaking good and so absolutely timely and necessary, that to be so stupendously let down in 3 short pages just felt wrong. Where was the editor on that one? But I digress, A River of Stars follows Scarlett Chen as she finds herself […]

As beautiful as it is broken (wherein I get a little bit personal after a hiatus)

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To say that this has been a difficult year would be an understatement. For Americans, no matter what one’s political affiliation is, it is clear to see that the rampant gas-lighting the current administration is putting us through is not normal. The word “fact” seems to have completely undergone a change in meaning, so much so that statements from politicians are view with the default setting of “definitely a lie.” Putting aside that I wake up every morning with a sense of impending dread that […]

“I didn’t know you this morning, and now I don’t remember not knowing you.”

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Natasha is desperately trying to keep her family from being deported, after her father, an illegal immigrant got a DUI and attracted the police’s attention. She’s been in the USA since she was six and barely remembers her life back in Jamaica anymore. She’s doing well in school and loves science and technology. She certainly doesn’t believe in love at first sight, or fated mates or fairytale endings. Even after she meets Daniel on a crowded New York street and he insists that they are […]



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